Tribute to Baroness Thatcher paid by former Tory MP

Former Banffshire MP and Edzell farmer, David Myles, was “honoured” to receive a personal invite to Baroness Thatcher’s funeral, which was held on April 16.

Although he was not able to attend, Mr Myles, who was elected as a Conservative MP in 1976, paid tribute to Lady Thatcher, saying: “I will miss her, but she won’t miss me.”

Speaking about being invited to the funeral, Mr Myles said: “It was a huge honour. She was marvellous. I knew her really quite well.”

Mr Myles first met Baroness Thatcher when he contested the Banffshire seat for the Conservatives in 1976. During his campaign, it was arranged that Lady Thatcher would visit to help his push for victory. She herself had not long won the leadership contest for the Conservative Party.

He commented: “We had arranged that she would visit the Glenfarclas Distillery, where she would meet the top people in the industry.

“She had all the top people in the whisky industry in that room and the chairman began to give her quite a long introduction. She interrupted him and said she didn’t have much time and would they accept that she spoke about all the things she could do to help the industry, all the things she knew about but can’t do anything about, and all the things she could try to do.

“She spoke for about ten minutes and when she finished she asked if anyone had any questions. There were none. She had covered all the points they would have made.”

In paying a final tribute to the UK’s first female Prime Minister, Mr Myles said: “She was a nice person, rather than the way she is painted. She caused a lot of trouble because if there was any minister not doing their job well, she just shifted them. She didn’t suffer fools gladly. She often knew far more about any subject than anybody who was taking a subject up with her knew.”

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